Democracy and human rights are in retreat in south-east Asia. Here's why

Jakarta: An election run by a junta that delivered victory to a military strong man. A new set of laws allegedly to target fake news, but which allow the government to issue "corrections". Death by stoning for extra-marital or gay sex. A job ad for "moral" hangmen. And statues of topless mermaids covered up - after 15 years on display - to respect "eastern norms".

Welcome to south-east Asia, where almost every day it seems another example emerges of the erosion of either the political and civil rights of individual citizens, or the diminution of democratic institutions.

The examples above refer, respectively, to Thailand's questionable recent election, which looks set to keep former general Prayut Chan-o-cha in power; proposed laws in Singapore that would allow a minister to order a "correction" to content hosted anywhere in the world if it is deemed "false"; the introduction of Sharia law in Brunei; Sri Lanka's decision to revive the death penalty for drug smuggling after 40 years; and a decision by a Jakarta theme park that was taken during an election campaign in which conservative Islamic forces are playing an increasingly assertive role.

These are just the recent examples.

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The election of Rodrigo Duterte to the Philippines' presidency in 2016 marked the beginning of a bloody war on drugs that has seen thousands die in so-called extrajudicial killings, a chilling crackdown on the free press (in particular on the popular online site Rappler and its editor-in-chief Maria Ressa), and that country shift out of the US' orbit and into authoritarian China's sphere of influence.

In Cambodia, dictator Hun Sen was so successful in the 2018 election he "won" all 125 seats in parliament while in Vietnam, bloggers and activists arguing for land reform, an end to corruption and for greater democratic freedoms are regularly jailed.

South-east Asia has always had an uneasy relationship with western norms of democracy and human rights. But it seems that - after a period of liberalisation and of an opening up of civil society - these rights and norms are now in retreat.

Two key elements driving the rise of illiberalism have been the resurgence in the number of "strongman" rulers in the region and the growing economic and military clout of China, backed by billions of dollars in potential infrastructure investment through Belt and Road Initiative.

Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Brunei, Singapore, Myanmar and Vietnam are all now led by strongmen, or are effectively one party states - or both.

Cambodia's Prime Minister Hun Sen.Credit:AP

Griffith Univeristy's lecturer Lee Morgenbesser, who is currently working on a project tracking the rise of authoritarianism in south-east Asia, says that "if you look around the region, maybe excluding Malaysia, there isn't one country untouched by deepening illiberalism".

"You have an illiberalism trend, and an 'autocratisation' trend. The first is about the reduction of political rights and civil liberties for individuals. The second is about the erosion of nominally democratic institutions, such as the banning of political parties."

Morgenbesser says there a few things to blame for the shift away from the liberalisation of south-east Asian societies: the rise of populist leaders in the past decade or so, which has been exacerbated by the election of Donald Trump, the financial crash of 2008, the US's declining support for democracy around the world, and the rise of China.

"China’s outsize influence on individual nations is now having an outsized influence on the regional architecture," he says.

Philippines' political scientist and author Richard Heydarian says current trends are not a surprise.

"My term for this is Asian Values 2.0," he says.

In the 1980s and 1990s you had [Singapore prime minister] Lee Kuan Yew and [Malaysia's prime minister] Dr Mahathir in his first incarnation arguing against enlightenment values. Pluralism, civil rights, human rights, arguing they were civilisationally alien to Asian societies."

Heydarian says that as economies in the region grew stronger, particularly after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, that argument ceased to carry as much weight. Citizens throughout the region demanded a greater share of the pie, and a greater say of decision making. But today, the political and economic balance in the region has changed once again.

Chinese President Xi Jinping.Credit:AP

"Now, the west is weaker and China is stronger," Heydarian says, while authoritarian populism is on the rise throughout the region.

"On the local level, if you look at the backbone of it [the rise in popular strongman rulers], it is the middle class. Whether it is the junta in Thailand, the middle class in Jakarta supporting [former military general and presidential candidate] Prabowo, or the middle class in the Philippines supporting Duterte."

"We are at a very difficult stage in the story of the development of Asian societies, we have to manage many problems, like technological disruption, and things are creating a profound sense of fear for ordinary people. In this environment the tendency is to go for a sort of father figure.

"I call it the strongman syndrome. It's the misplaced supposition that complex 21st century problems can be dealt with by a strong-willed person."

For China, being able to deal with one strongman leader is also preferable to dealing with a messy democracy.

Human Rights Watch deputy south-east Asia director, Phil Robertson, says the growing role of religion - particularly Islam - in politics has played a part in the trend towards illiberalism in the region. So, too, have strongmen rulers in countries like Cambodia which have created "sock puppet democracies".

"Malaysia is the one country [in the region] where the system is actually getting better," he says bluntly, "Indonesia has the potential for greater liberalisation, depending on the outcome of the [April 17] election, but the politicisation of Islam is creating real problems there."

As Heydarian puts it: "It's like all the stars have aligned to mess with liberalism".

James Massola is south-east Asia correspondent, based in Jakarta. He was previously chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He has been a Walkley and Quills finalist on three occasions.